Meet the new boss: same as the old boss

Minister Shatter's replacement hits the ground with true colours flying

Fine Gael relentlessly circles the wagons, to put a pretty new face on an ugly scandal, and baffle us with bull.

Hope springs eternal, and for just a moment, some of us may have just wondered if the present Dublin government might learn a lesson from the fall of Mr Shatter. But no fear of that. Everything's back to normal: total corruption, under a paper-thin veneer of window-dressing.

With breathtakingly contempt for the public's intelligence, Minister Fitzgerald lost no time in announcing everything's under control, and the Gardí had nothing to do with that bugging of the Garda Ombudsman's office (GSOC). And the “people in charge of the GSOC” had nothing to do with it either. Well. Don't we all feel better now?

It's marvelous, how some denials are so feverish as to be practically a confession. Of course no one but Gardí could possibly be behind bugging the office that investigates the GardÍ. Who else would want to know? Who else has bugging equipment was “not commercially available or sold to non-government agencies.” **

But “the people in charge of the GSOC”...? Well thank you, Ms Fitzgerald. We hadn't thought of that one. Now we know whom you were hired to protect, from what. (And it's not us, from official crimes.)

This tells us everything we need to know about the new Minister. Mr Shatter had to step down because no one would believe him anymore. What they needed was to put a new face on the same brazen lies.

Clearly, covering up the Shatter – Garda scandal is the prime directive here. The new MInister's glossy PR events, press conferences and announcements about “Garda reform” and creating an “independent Garda” authority, are the merest camouflage. Just weapons of mass distraction, to deflect attention, and make it look like something's being done.

This is Fine Gael: as a famous Irish comic said, “Fianna Fail, with a croissant.”

(** Security company that uncovered the bugging at GSOC, quoted in The Sunday Times.)